Brazil Brothers Charged With Burying Father Alive

RIO DE JANEIRO – Two brothers were charged with killing their father, a local Afro-Brazilian religious leader, by knocking him out with sleeping pills and then burying him alive, investigators told a Brazilian news website.

Antonio Valente Filho, chief of police of Timon, in Maranhao state, told Globo TV's G1 website that the brothers, ages 18 and 21, confessed this week to planning the murder. They told police their father was a violent man who drank too much and didn't accept their homosexuality, said Filho said.

A neighbor was also questioned about whether he helped the brothers dig the hole, Valente Filho told G1. Neither the suspects nor the victim were named.

The two men gave their father a stronger dose than usual of his sleeping pills and buried him while he was unconscious, G1 reported. An autopsy confirmed the victim died underground of asphyxiation.